3-Star Review: 'The Who & the What' at Victory Gardens is latest play by "Disgraced" writer Ayad Akhtar.

Is God perfect? Can a feminist obey the teachings of the prophet Muhammad? Should she obey her father? Is the hijab something for a Muslim woman to wear with pride, or does it make her a victim of patriarchal subjugation?

All of those questions swirl around "The Who & the What," the gutsy and very admirable 2014 play by Ayad Akhtar, a Pakistani-American scribe who grew up in Milwaukee and is the author of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, "Disgraced."

One of the many remarkable things about Akhtar's newer work, now in its first Chicago production at the Victory Gardens Theater, is that it probes the universal immigrant story of tradition versus modernity, while also never stinting in its specificity in its rigorous examination of the impact of conservative interpretations of Islam.

Especially on women.

To some degree, "The Who & The What" is probing the same ground as that of Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge" or the issues behind the musical "The Fiddler on the Roof." These all are stories of smart, loved, educated young people trying simultaneously to pay homage to their moralizing religious traditions and community while also self-actualizing and striking out on their own.

Akhtar focuses on two daughters here: Mahwish (Minita Gandhi), whose rebellions are mostly personal and private, and her sister, Zarina (Susaan Jamshidi), an intellectual writer and the character in which Akhtar clearly sees himself and his own struggles as a Muslim-American scribe with a reputation for offending the conservative factions of the community whence he came.

Zarina mostly butts heads and minds with her father Afzal (Rom Barkhourdar), a successful taxi-company owner in Atlanta and a traditional Muslim who is appalled by Zarina's latest work of art — a shocking and radical novel about women and Islam that dares to question the infallibility of the prophet.

Telling these stories usually requires an outsider who can look in on all the family trauma — and in this play, that role is played by Eli (the excellent Shane Kenyon), a convert to Islam who grew up in Detroit with leftist parents and ends up as Zarina's supportive partner, despite being, on some levels, a walking set of contradictions himself. All in all, this is a very potent set of players.

Although Ron OJ Parson is generally a director who lights fire on the stage, "The Who & the What" came off on opening night as overly muted and hesitant, with several actors not looking entirely comfortable with their roles.

This is a play with inflamed passions, and needs more zest and anger than this cast was delivering. Part of the problem, I think, is that Scott Davis' design uses a soft curtain rather than walls, and the show thus feels rather swallowed on the big Biograph stage. It lacks edge and incision.

There are most certainly some fine moments — Akhtar takes great pains to present Afzal as a loving man who cared deeply for his late wife and whose overprotection of his daughters flows from that sense of loss. Barkhourdar shows us that, just as Gandhi shows us a young woman who wants to rebel without ruffling parental feathers, and Jamshidi paints a portrait of a woman for whom merely asking questions comes at great personal cost.

But this is a play that should have more at stake — like most of Akhtar's dramatic concerns, these are matters of ancient ways clashing with modernity. There are few bigger debates in human civilization and this is one great new American writer unafraid of starting an argument. Even with the flaws of the production, "The Who & the What" is not a script to miss.